Over the course of 2 days at James Madison U, thousands of students were forced to face abortion.

An op-ed piece in the James Madison University (JMU) Breeze validated (again) the effectiveness of CBR’s Genocide Awareness Project (GAP):

“… our campus was so abruptly forced to face [abortion] this week.”

Mission accomplished!

Sarah Freeze, the author of the piece, was confused about whether the humanity of the preborn child was of any consequence at all.

She wrote, “The question we should be asking is this: Are you pregnant?”

We responded:

According to Ms. Freeze, it doesn’t matter at all whether the preborn child is human or not, nor if abortion unjustly kills a human being or not.  The only question we must ask is, “Am I pregnant?”  If the answer is “no,” then we must not have any opinion on the matter.

Really?

Let’s apply this logic in another context, 200 years ago.  Applying Ms. Freeze’s logic, it wouldn’t matter if the black man is a human being or not, nor whether slavery unjustly steals the lives of black men and women.  The only question we must ask is, “Do I have a cotton plantation?”  If the answer is “no,” then we must not have any opinion on the matter.

She responded

While I appreciate your response, to my opinion, I do have to point out that your argument is wrongly applying my view on abortion to a view on slavery.  Abortion affects no one outside of the woman’s body.  Slavery obviously affected several people and generations and is definitely not the same thing.

We answered

You’d be right in your conclusion, if you had your facts straight.  Of course if no person were killed by abortion, then the right to abort would be established.  But you ignore the other human being, the one being decapitated and dismembered.

When you deny the humanity and personhood of the preborn child, you are making the same mistake that was made by slavery apologists who said that Black slaves were “subordinate and inferior.”  They reasoned, as you do, that the victim class was not fully human, therefore the real people (the ones who counted) could do anything they wanted to those subhumans.  You are making the exact same mistake … unless, of course, you can provide some compelling evidence that the preborn are, in fact, subhuman.

She will offer no such evidence, because there is none.  If she bothers to formulate an argument, it will inevitably allow us to kill certain born people as well.

German student: I don’t know how old you are, but …

“Frederick,” a James Madison University (JMU) student from Germany, was ashamed of his peers. He said to CBR’s Jane Bullington,

“It is so closed-minded to decide you guys have nothing worth hearing and just sit on the sidelines protesting.

I am studying genocide and human atrocities.  These photos are not disturbing; the actions are disturbing.  Folks need to get out of their comfort zone and engage others so they can expand their world views.  It is pitiful that my peers are so pansy and childish.

I don’t know how old you are, but I do know that you know more than I do and I need to listen and learn.  And whether this is genocide or not, I see the reasons for the comparisons and it is an atrocity.

You have made my Tuesday.  My comfort zone has been stretched once again.  Thank you for coming, and thank you for taking with me.”

He’s right about one thing.  Jane is pretty old.

Lincoln Brandenburg explains prenatal development at James Madison University

by Lincoln Brandenburg

At James Madison U, I spoke with a young Jewish lady who had heard about GAP and came out to see it.  She was Jewish and was offended by the comparisons of abortion with the Holocaust.

She opened by declaring that “Abortion is not genocide!”   I responded, “You are absolutely right … if the preborn are not human.  Were that true, the comparison would be inappropriate and the right to abort would be established.

“But if the preborn are human, as science tells us they are, then we kill over a million humans every year.  Then there’s no better word to describe it.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re causing me to change how I think about this.”  (protester at James Madison U)

She brought up many examples of when abortion might be “needed,” such as for a woman who is in college and cannot take care of a baby.  Again, I agreed with her that abortion would be acceptable in those cases (and, indeed, in every case) … if the preborn were anything less than human.

She began to grasp the concept that the humanity of the preborn is the central question to the morality of abortion.

Some of her friends have had abortions and she didn’t want to believe they are guilty of murder.  I assured her that we are not here to condemn or judge her friends; they may be good people who didn’t realize that abortion decapitates and dismembers a baby.  I pointed out that, like many who have seen these images, they might not have aborted their children had they known how evil abortion really is.

As we spoke, her demeanor changed.  She glanced at the pro-abortion protesters and said, “I don’t want to say this out loud, but you’re making good points.  You’re really making me shift in my view.”

I told her how I personally became a pro-life activist after connecting abortion to the Holocaust.  I knew that I couldn’t say I would have stood up for Jews (her ancestors) in Nazi Germany back then, if I didn’t stand up for preborn children right now.

As we continued to discuss the logic of standing up for all human beings, she hesitantly said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re causing me to change how I think about this.”

Some respond to GAP with a closed mind, but others are willing to blindfold their own prejudices.  At first, she opposed our use of abortion pictures, but she had to admit that our conversation (and many others) would not have happened without the tension created by the photos.  Dr. King was right:

“I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’  I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”  (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Lincoln Brandenburg is a Project Director for CBR in Georgia.  He iis with the GAP team in Virginia this week.

Abortion victim photos (AVPs) don’t just convert people to pro-life.  They affect everyone.  They …

1. neutralize the opposition, …
2. convert the neutral, …
3. activate the converted, and …
4. energize the active.

Live Action News recently highlighted the pro-life activism of Katie Perrotta at Eastern Michigan University.  She is just one more example of a student who became actively pro-life after seeing GAP.

From Live Action News:

Katie Perrotta is a 20-year-old student at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Having grown up “pro-life” she wasn’t active in defending life until she witnessed a campus display featuring images of abortion victims and the angry reaction of pro-choice students. It was then that she started reaching out to her campus and actively defending life.

We are often challenged by pro-lifers who resist our efforts to expose abortion.  We recently met with a group of students who offered a series of objections to our work.  Here are their objections and our answers.

Objection:  We will be disliked, hated, criticized, etc.

Response:  MLK, Lewis Hine, William Wilberforce, and Thomas Clarkson were all disliked, hated, criticized, etc. … and more.  If we are serious about ending abortion, we need to be as strong as they were.  In Dr. King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail, he was very clear that reformers must expose evil, in spite of the inevitable negative reaction from those who support the status quo.  Please take a few minutes and read his letter.

Objection:  There is nothing but anecdotal evidence to say that pictures work.

Response: We have ample independent evidence to prove pictures work:

1. We have the verdict of history that says pictures always work to educate, change public opinion, and ultimately public policy.
2. We also have the history that reformers who don’t use pictures never succeed.
3. At Middle Tennessee State, 15% of passersby said the GAP display changed their minds.  That was in addition to the sizeable percentage (40-50%) who said the display made them even more sure of their pro-life beliefs.
4. Typically, about 10% (range: 5-15%) of the respondents to our informal polls tell us that the GAP display changed their minds.
5. At the U of Louisville, 65% of an independent group of students said the display was effective at changing minds.  That included 29% who said GAP changed their own minds.
6. Here is another statistic that is not anecdotal.  At 100% of the venues at which we have displayed GAP, multiple people have told us that our pictures changed their minds.  Others changed their minds but didn’t tell us until later.  Here are just a few examples:
   1. 1. University of North Florida (mind changed 3 years earlier)
      2. University of California Irvine (baby saved 3 years earlier)
      3. University of California Riverside (mind changed 1 year earlier)
7. The following comments came from just one philosophy class at the U of Louisville:
   1. 1. Student B:  I had always believed in choice … but the pictures were too convincing.   I’m not sure why the relationship between abortion and genocide has never crossed my mind, but the display was surprisingly convincing.  … Abortion is a form of murder and genocide.
      2. Student I:  … it truly changed my perspective on abortion …
      3. Student L:  I had only a few cheap glances over at [the pictures], but what I did see I wish I would have not. … [The photos] made me think about this and I think that the pictures woke me up … and gave me a reality check. … The pictures said enough for me.
      4. Student O:  The first picture stuck in my head and I just stared at it in total shock. It was a picture of a tiny little embryo/baby, its head the size of a dime, lying dead in blood with all its organs visible … They are murdered because of the selfishness of others.
      5. Student P:  I think these photos were used to prove the point that abortion is still murder and in mass numbers, should be compared to genocide.  I didn’t think of abortion in this way until viewing the exhibit.
      6. Student A:  It definitely make everybody not just stop and look, but to really think about the message … It worked!
      7. Student J:  They made the presentation so that you didn’t want to look but you couldn’t help but look.
      8. Student Q:  It was a clear illustration of how a well-planned … [the] project could reach hundreds of people in a very short span of time.

Objection:  This approach is not compassionate to post-abortive women.

Response:  Many post-abortive women have told us to please show the pictures so that others won’t make the same mistake they made.  One such woman is Dr. Alveda King, who had 2 abortions.  Others have said that only by seeing abortion pictures were they able to come out of denial, confess, repent and heal.  One such woman is on this video.  We always try to bring a team of post-abortive women who can reach out to women on campus who wish to discuss their experiences.  Pictures don’t hurt women; abortion hurts women.

No reformers have ever stopped an injustice by covering it up.  Reformers like Dr. King, William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Lewis Hine, and others have always used horrifying images to educate the public and create a forum in which the purveyors of injustice were forced to defend the indefensible.  The purveyors of injustice had never had to do that before.  With abortion pictures, we create a forum in which abortion apologists are forced to defend the practice of decapitating and dismembering little human beings.  They can’t do it.  But only the display of abortion images forces them to try and thus exposes the frivolity of their arguments.

If we don’t expose injustice, history is clear that the killing will never end.  There is nothing our opponents fear more than pictures.

.

At the University of California at Riverside, a student let us know how GAP changed her mind a year ago.

“I want to thank everyone who showed this to me … because it’s important for people like me to get the right information.”

Watch brief video below:

“I don’t want you to stop showing the pictures. They’re working so don’t get discouraged …”

This was the third time Candace had seen abortion pictures on display.  As Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust held abortion photos on the street, Candace drove by.  She was overcome with gratitude, so she pulled over to talk.

The first time she saw abortion photos was in 2010 at UC Irvine, where CBR was displaying the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP).  She was 5 weeks pregnant with Daughtry, her first child, and was planning to abort.  Watch the videos below to see what happened next.

A year later, when Daughtry was only a few months old, Candace volunteered to help when GAP returned to UC Irvine.

Here she is now, the happy mother of 2:

Here she was in 2011:

Written on the free speech board at North Carolina State. (Click on image to enlarge.)

by Maggie Egger

I’d been dealing with protesters and administrators all morning — not sure which is worse, sometimes —  but things had quieted down a bit.  I was finally ready to engage a few students, so I went over to our free speech board.  It is a low-stress place they can write whatever they want without fear of confrontation, but we can often use their comments as springboards for dialogue.

I saw a young woman writing on the board, so I casually walked over to see what she was writing and to possibly start a conversation.  What I saw next moved me.  She was writing furiously fast, right in the middle of the board.  I discreetly looked over her shoulder to read her comments, expecting to see some justification for abortion, a rant about women’s rights, or whatever.  Instead, I discovered this:

People say they shouldn’t have to give birth to conceptions of rape.  As a probable conception of rape writing this, I feel discriminated against, as if my life is worth less than everyone else’s.  You don’t have to raise a child of rape, ADOPTION IS AN OPTION!  You would not believe how thankful my parents are that I was not aborted, but given to them, a couple who were not able to conceive.

As soon as she finished writing, before I had a chance to speak with her, she walked away.  Honestly though, I don’t know what else she could have said that she hadn’t already.

Not long after that, I was standing near the poll table when a young man came up to answer “Yes” to our poll question “Should abortion remain legal?” I asked him why he thought that.

His main argument was that it’s a woman’s choice to make, and therefore it has to be legal, regardless of her justifications.  We started discussing some of those justifications and soon another young man joined our conversation.  He said he was pro-life, except in the case of rape.

I said to him, “You have to be careful when you start making exceptions to who has a right to life.  There are people on this campus, your fellow students, who were conceived in rape and you have effectively just told them ‘I wouldn’t care if your mothers had killed you before you were born,’ simply because of circumstances outside of their control.  Have you thought about that?”

I walked them over to the free speech board and showed them what the woman had written earlier.  I could see the wheels turning, turning.  The “pro-life” student started to look a little guilty.  The pro-choice student said, “Yeah, maybe some of the reasons women get abortions aren’t that valid after all.”

I have always said that abortion can be justified only when necessary to save the mother’s life.  However, I have still found the case of rape to be one of the hardest questions to answer satisfactorily.  People get so focused on the woman being the victim and easing her pain, they just can’t see the other victim who needs their compassion and love.  They can’t imagine “forcing” the woman to do anything else she doesn’t wholeheartedly agree to (i.e. carrying a pregnancy to term).

That day at NC State helped me realize what the problem is, for some.  They want to help the victim, but they don’t realize that they are actively creating more victims, in two ways.  First, they are condoning a woman’s choice to destroy her unborn child based on how the child was conceived.  Second, they are victimizing those born people conceived in rape whose mothers chose not to kill them, by saying their lives are less valuable.

Sadly, most college students in America have a personal experience with rape, whether it was themselves or their classmates.  They can relate to those victims.  But how many of them have a personal experience with someone who is a “conception of rape”?  They can’t relate, because they don’t see the face of the second victim.  GAP brings those faces out into the open.

Now showing at a campus near you!

Maggie Egger is a CBR Project Director and FAB contributor.  She served as site manager for CBR’s Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) at North Carolina State University in April 2014.

by Mick Hunt

“Abortion bias seeps into news.”

Well, we older pro-lifers have known this a long time.  In fact, a stunning revelation of the universal modern phenomena written by a staff writer appeared with this exact title in the LA Times in 1990, 24 years ago.  One reason for the bias, the author says, is because as many as 90% of reporters and editors “favor abortion rights.”

… we bypass the bias and censorship of the news media and go directly to people, which is to say, it is media, carrying the message to readers, listeners, and viewers.

Since Roe v. Wade and before, the American populace has been subjected to daily distortion, misinformation, and news blackouts about abortion and the pro-life movement. No wonder we encounter so much inertia and resistance to protecting pre-natal children.

If anything, what once was bias has transformed into abortion advocacy.

When the old Soviet Union controlled all the open media within its empire, it still could not suppress the truth. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty broadcast news into communist controlled territories. From within, dissidents secretly typed, reproduced on mimeograph machines, and hand-distributed censored publications, including fiction, poetry, and unofficial news accounts, which all was called samizdat.

The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) and its Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) are like Radio Liberty and samizdat.  With GAP, we bypass the bias and censorship of the news media and go directly to people, which is to say, it is media, carrying the message to readers, listeners, and viewers.

And not only does GAP communicate and generate discussion at the display and between people around campus, it provokes multiple news stories and commentary.

Soviet dissident and Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote that even distorted, deceptive propaganda can be informative once you have learned to read between the lines, so keep this in mind as you look into the media reports and published comments.  And with some material, such as this revealing Facebook Event page from the group that attempted to censor GAP at NC State University last spring (as with C.S. Lewis’s book The Screwtape Letters), you have to reverse the values and meanings portrayed.

This summer my son spent ten days in Prague, Czech Republic.  He said a dominant feature of the city skyline was the imposing Žižkov television tower, standing at seven hundred and nine feet tall, a remnant of the Soviet Union’s intention to block television broadcasts from free Germany and the West.

The story is always the same.

With the help of supporters (click here to help), CBR will continue to broadcast the uncensored truth about the oppression of abortion directly to the many thousands of students, staff, and faculty on our nation’s university campuses and to people on our public highways and byways.  We will go back again and again.  And then we pray truth and courage together will topple the abortion empire.

Mick Hunt (Meredith Eugene Hunt) is a FAB contributor.  He has helped organize more than 50 Genocide Awareness Projects (GAPs) all over the southeast and elsewhere.

A typical scene at our UNC GAP. (Click to enlarge.)

by Mick Hunt

Earlier this month, a woman verbally and physically abused Created Equal (CE) staffers who were showing abortion victim photos in Columbus, Ohio.  The incident was caught on tape and received extensive news coverage, including an interview on the Sean Hannity show (link here).

The attacker repeatedly called CE staffers misogynist and racist.  If you are engaged in important work like CE and CBR, it won’t be long before someone says those things about you … if you are white and male.

But when women and people of minority races express pro-life views, it proves the issues of race and gender to be irrelevant to the argument.

The pro-life movement has a number of prominent African-American leaders like Dr. Alveda King (niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.) and Rev. Clenard Childress (a CBR director).  To help complete the picture, however, I’d like to share a few black voices.  These are stories written by staff and volunteers who helped with our recent GAPs in North Carolina, but they might have come from any state.

UNC-Chapel Hill  (March 31-April 1, 2014)

p A black female student told me her brother was supposed to be aborted, but her mother went through with the pregnancy and her brother turned out fine.  She was glad we were showing the truth.

p I gave a brochure to a black man and asked if he would like to know how we make the genocide comparison.  He took the brochure and said emphatically, “It is genocide!”

p A black male student said, “I thought it was OK until maybe 3 months, until I saw these pictures.  I had no idea!”

p Black male psychology student said, “Human fetus = person.”

p Conversation with an older black female:  Q: Would you like some information?  A: No, because I agree with you.

p Tony, a black student, was staring at the signs, listening to the crazy NARAL woman, and asked her, pointing to the signs, “How is that hate?” (This was in response to a comment she had made repeatedly.)  She said, “I’ve had an abortion, and I’m not ashamed of it, but their signs are trying to shame me for my choice.”  Tony was not buying any of it.  I was standing right there, so we began talking, along with two other black women.  Tony said, among other things, “It seems like anything pro-God, pro-morality, pro-creation, etc. gets stifled on this campus.  It’s ironic that they try to profess tolerance, and yet with their appeal to the Dean, they are trying to shut you up, and take away your rights.  That’s what is hate.  If we don’t have the First Amendment, we don’t have anything.  Them trying to get you guys off campus, we might as well be back in the 50’s.  It’s just like the racist saying, ‘Get in the back, n***’”

North Carolina State University (April 2-3, 2014)

p A black female student was raised in a pro-life church and family; she didn’t know about the NCSU Students for Life group and immediately signed up.  She came back to volunteer the next day.  Her Bishop came as well and we encouraged him as a black pro-life pastor.  Four of our folks went to his church on Friday to support their work.

Next time: African-American performance artist Shawn Welcome’s poem “Civil War.”

………………………….
Mick Hunt (Meredith Eugene Hunt) is a FAB contributor.  He has helped organize more than 50 Genocide Awareness Projects (GAPs) all over the Southeast and elsewhere.

A UNC student studies the GAP display

by Mick Hunt

In an earlier post, I gave examples of “pro-choice” meanness at UNC.  But there’s more to the story.   In spite of the intolerance we witnessed among the hard-core leftists, there were many thoughtful students with open minds whose responses encourage us to continue in this difficult work.  Here are a few stories and comments you will enjoy:

 A young man protested in front of our GAP display.  He said that he was strongly pro-choice, although he would not want his girlfriend or wife to have an abortion.  After a lengthy dialogue with one of our volunteers, he looked at the pictures for about 20 minutes, saying very little.  Then he said, “You have some compelling arguments.  Although I’m pro-choice, that doesn’t mean I always will be.  You’ve dissected this complex issue and made it very difficult for me to be pro-choice.”

 A campus groundskeeper said that even though he was pro-choice, our display had an impact on him.  After hearing why we compare abortion to other forms of genocide, he said he still didn’t agree.  However, we had gotten him to think about it.

 A young man said he didn’t get the genocide comparison because abortion isn’t based on race or nationality.  We explained to him how the Cambodian genocide was based on level of education.  He said, “Thank you.  I guess I had a very narrow view of what genocide is.”

 Two young men wanted to talk and learn about abortion and our display.  Afterward one said, “Thank you for a calm conversation.  These emotional issues so often end in ad hominem attacks.”

 Katie was taught by her mother at a young age that if she ever got pregnant before she finished college, and was not married, she would have to have an abortion.  She looked sadly at the display, almost crying.  She said, “Before seeing your display, if I had gotten pregnant, I would have had an abortion.  I never really thought what abortion did to a baby or even if it really was a baby.  But no more.  Now I know the truth.  I have a post-abortive friend and I am going back to talk with her and provide resources to move her toward healing.”

And lastly, a woman sent the following letter to CBR headquarters:

Dear Genocide Awareness Project,

From 2005-2009 I was a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  On multiple occasions I saw your anti-abortion presentation and was shocked to see the dismembered little bodies.  I was pro-choice when I was in college, mostly out of selfishness and lack of knowledge about the development of a fetus.  I am now officially pro-life after having my first daughter and finally realizing WHAT is going on when a baby is developing in the womb.  My SIX WEEK baby had a HEART BEAT … and we are allowed to kill them?

I will not give you my whole story, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for what you do.  I am sure that you get much more argumentative and accusatory feedback than positive feedback.  Please let me tell you that when I hear my baby’s heartbeat (and I tracked her growth) I remembered your posters on campus and finally understood what you were fighting for. … I’m only sorry it took me so long.

THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU DO.  Your project made a difference in my life.

E. W.

………………………….
Mick (Meredith Eugene) Hunt is a regular FAB contributor.  He has helped organize more than 50 Genocide Awareness Projects (GAPs) all over the Southeast and elsewhere.

Julie and Emily Ascik, Co-Presidents of Carolina Students for Life.  (They both are wearing glasses. Click to enlarge.)

by Mick Hunt

The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) changes lives among our audience—students, staff, and faculty of our nation’s largest public universities.  And it also changes the pro-life student leaders who host the project, by making them stronger.

In an earlier post, I gave examples of “pro-choice” meanness at UNC, including an account written by CBR Project Director Edie Benchabbat, who described how some UNC students attempted to dehumanize a pro-life student leader, one of the co-presidents of Carolina Students for Life, and how she felt bullied.  Edie also reflected on how we encourage pro-life students for the long term. She wrote about the UNC incident:

Now I look at our role in a different way.  So many pro-life students and adults felt intimidated by the pro abortion-choicers and whispered as they walked by, “Thank you!”  We bring a strength to our students.  We give them the foundation to stand up for the unborn.  They may go out alone sometimes, but I think the level of their impact and the level of confidence in coming face-to-face with evil is stronger with us.  I see us as spiritual, physical, and emotional bodyguards so the pro-life students will blossom into strong advocates for the pre-born children.

And if you think the pro-life UNC student leaders were discouraged by the ill treatment they received, consider what Julie and Emily Ascik, the co-presidents of Carolina Students for Life, wrote after GAP in their letter recommending the project for other universities:

It really is scary and was scary for us to bring the GAP Project to our very liberal, very pro-choice campus.  But it was also probably very scary for Martin Luther King and William Wilberforce to speak up about their causes, especially towards the beginning when they were alone in their stance and when people were afraid their tactics would offend people.  Abortion IS horrible and seeing the pictures of it is horrible, but we must make sure other people know what is happening thousands of times daily in our society.  As William Wilberforce once said, “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”

We actually rejoiced when some UNC students staged a counter-protest; it meant they were thinking about abortion.  Contrary to what most people think, having people talking about abortion, even if they are angry and insulting, is a good and productive thing to do.  Yes, it hurts when they say hate-filled and incorrect things to and about you, but as Gandhi once said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Next time, I’ll share some UNC stories about how GAP changed our audience.

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Mick (Meredith Eugene) Hunt is a regular FAB contributor.  He has helped organize more than 50 Genocide Awareness Projects (GAPs) all over the Southeast and elsewhere.

Masked male students at UNC try to distract and misdirect people from images of aborted children with banner, drums, and absurd ad hominems.

“Pro-choice” NCSU students tried to block the view of GAP until campus police stopped them.

by Mick Hunt

In Part 1, I wrote about how abortion clinic escorts use misdirection and distraction, which are among the tools of stage illusionists as a way of controlling the audience’s attention.  These same tools are also at the heart of “pro-choice” rhetoric.

Ad-hominem attacks against pro-lifers are obvious, and a trained debater won’t be sidetracked by them, but virtually every women-centered question or statement is also misdirection.  The real issue is not whether we should care about women.  Everyone knows we should.  The real issue is about caring for pre-natal children.

My answer to many questions is, “We should treat pre-natal children the same as we should treat born children.”  Or, “Whatever problem you pose with a pregnancy and a pre-natal child, we should find a solution that is, in principle, no different than if the child were born.”

To a large extent, even the scientific debate over when human life begins is misdirection and distraction.  My philosopher-carpenter friend, John S., wrote recently in a letter to a state official, “Questions like ‘when does life begin’ or ‘what is a person’ are exercises in playing dumb.  We know when life begins—it begins at conception (fertilization).  We know what a person is—it’s a human being.”

The answer then is not so much in talking about abortion, but in acting as if abortion is murder.  The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) is a powerful appropriate indirect response to the gravity of abortion.  It’s really not debate, but a presentation of facts through imagery.  GAP is a statement of the obvious to people who are distracted.  Any contribution to debate we make has more to do with interpreting the images for people who are confused.

GAP creates problems for abortion-choice supporters. In the face of evidence of the gruesome violence, “pro-choice” rhetorical engagement is a losing proposition.  GAP compels either acquiescence, active resistance, or a dilution of our effort.  Since the activists don’t intend to quit, they must issue propaganda and organize protests.  They spread propaganda through social media and campus publications.

We see resistance in most schools, but I’d like to focus for now on the campus of the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, and at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh.

At Chapel Hill, abortion supporting students lined up in front of the GAP display with signs and helium balloons.  A couple of masked male students tapped on snare drums for endless hours.  A Planned Parenthood representative stood on a wall overlooking the scene and shouted meaningless patter about condoms and filing complaints with the Dean of Students.  At NC State, the abortion “counter protest” took a further step by attempting to block the view of the GAP display and form a complete wall of bodies and signs.

The portrayal of the victims of abortion through GAP helps distracted and misdirected people attend to the real issue of abortion.  And if GAP is so effective that abortion supporters must turn out in force to distract people from seeing the images, then shouldn’t we do GAP even more often?

Mick Hunt (Meredith Eugene Hunt) is a FAB contributor.  He has helped organize more than 50 Genocide Awareness Projects (GAPs) all over the southeast and elsewhere.

Laurice Baddour shares the Love of Christ everywhere she goes.

Pray for students who need healing.  A young woman walked past, then turned around and came back.  She asked of Ohio volunteer Laurice Baddour, “What would you do in the case of rape, and you had no other choice but to have an abortion?”  Laurice: “Were you raped and had an abortion?”  “Yes, when I was young.”  (She is still so young!)  So they talked.  Laurice shared with her our “Ask the Victim” handout, told her that there are resources for healing, and said that maybe one day she will have regrets and want to access some of these resources.  She walked away abruptly, but as she left Laurice said “Please know I truly care about you and am here for you.”  She looked back, listened, then sadly and quietly walked away.  Such women often suffer great pain and are unable to engage in civil conversation.  God had prepared her heart for a seed of truth.  Pray that this seed will grow and produce the fruit of healing.

The whole family needs healing.  Missie was looking at the photos, at a distance, crying.  Massachusetts volunteer Marie went to see what she could do.  “My boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend (Susan) just had an abortion and we are all devastated and angry at her.  We all would have helped her and she didn’t let us.”  Missie took information on Rachel’s Vineyard and promised to give it to Susan as soon as her own emotions had calmed down.  She believes Susan will be hurting sooner rather than later.

Bryan McKinney came all the way from Virginia, along with his wife Christie and 17-month-old daughter Elizabeth, to save babies and moms at Michigan State.

Let us follow Paul’s example of praying for the lost.

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.  (Romans 10:1)

Pray for students who believe lies.  As is always the case, pro-aborts asserted that the pre-born aren’t human.  Honest students, even those neutral on abortion, were surprised that pro-aborts would base their arguments on something so blatantly false.  (When Does Human Life Begin?)  Pray that these students will come out of denial.

Pray for students who know the truth but lack courage to face it.  Virginia volunteer Bryan McKinney spoke with two female students for a good bit of time.  She answered the usual questions.   Both young women were quiet for a long time and looked up at the pictures of children who had been decapitated and dismembered.   The next day, Bryan saw one of the women standing with the pro-abortion protesters.  When their eyes met, the young woman looked away.  She knew what she was doing was wrong.  Pray that this student will have courage to accept the truth.